Riva Aquarama with the heart of Lamborghini

If I mention Lamborghini, what will be your first association? Maybe an extraordinary luxury car? In most cases yes, but this time we will go from the land into the water and continue our story about the Lamborghini.

Ferruccio Lamborghini’s Riva Aquarama speedboat powered by two Lamborghini engines, has emerged after an extensive three year restoration. The majority of Riva Aquarama were powered by low-revving – though extremely powerful and reliable – American V-8 engines.

Forty-five years after it was commissioned by Ferruccio himself, it’s back on the water, complete with not one, but two classic Lamborghini V12s. Specially adapted for use in a boat, each 4.0-liter V-12 produces 350-horsepower, propelling the Aquarama to 48 knots (55 landlubber’s miles per hour). This made it not only the fastest Aquarama ever built, but an Aquarama with the heart of a Lamborghini.

„It was complete, but decades in the salty environment was not very good for the wood and it needed quite a lot of work,“ says Sandro Zani, the owner of Dutch Riva. „We replaced the bottom and partially the sides and deck, but we kept all the original framework, the seats are still the original seats, all the hardware, instruments, that was all kept and restored.“

Ferruccio Lamborghini died in 1993, and the boat has now passed into the hands of a private collector. In the Ferruccio Lamborghini Museum in Italy, one of the two original engines from the Riva can still be seen.